The draft guidance aims to explain the professional obligations and standards of solicitors, including what they are unable to do. It clarifies, for example, that solicitors cannot be pressurised to change their legal advice to meet commercial goals or destroy correspondence that might be relevant to future litigation or any investigation.
It highlights that solicitors have duties of confidentiality and legal professional privilege, which means ‘there may be occasions where some individuals or departments will be unable to see what a solicitor has advised on in relation to a particular issue’.
The other draft guidance and case studies, published last week, cover running internal investigations, identifying your client when working in-house, and reporting concerns about wrongdoing when working in-house. It sets out the processes to go through, as well as what to do when, having reported the wrongdoing, the governing body lets it continue. In that case, the draft guidance suggests in-house solicitors avoid doing anything ‘that helps to facilitate the wrongdoing. For example, you should not draft a contract or agreement which you know your employer will have to breach the law to fulfil.’ Nor should the solicitor do ‘anything which suppresses exposure of the information’.
More than 34,500 solicitors—one in five solicitors—work in-house at more than 6,000 organisations.
Juliet Oliver, general counsel at the SRA, said: ‘As well as ongoing feedback from those working in the sector, recent high-profile cases such as the Post Office case have really shone a light on the unique challenges and issues which in-house solicitors can encounter.
‘We have been working closely with the in-house community over the past year to consider what support we can offer to address some of these challenges. We believe these resources will provide valuable support and guidance to in-house solicitors across a range of important issues. But to make sure this is the case, we want to take this opportunity to invite those working in the sector to input.’
View the draft guidance and provide feedback by 19 April on the SRA's website.
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